The music video opens with a naked woman holding a singing conch shell in front of her vagina. Then other objects show up and start crooning too. There are oysters, coin purses in varying shapes and colors, plenty of exotic fruits. Despite differences, this vagina-evoking chorus belts out a familiar anthem: “We’ve come a long long way together/ Through the hard times and the good/ I have to celebrate you baby/ I have to praise you like I should.”

That’s the same verse sampled and popularized as a dance tune in the late-’90s by Fat Boy Slim, but in this case it’s done in the more melodic format of the original recording, the 1975 release “Take Yo’ Praise” by folk singer Camille Yarbrough. Her refrain continues: “You’re so rare/ You’re so fine/ I’m so glad you’re mine.”

The tribute to female genitalia is called “Viva La Vulva” and doubles as an advertisement for Libresse, which makes tampons and pads. It was developed by BBDO United Kingdom and just won top honors in the Creativity for Good category of the D&AD Professional Awards, a competition celebrating the year’s best product designs and commercial advertising. It also earned an overall award for universal excellence among all contestants.

The basic goal of creativity for good concepts is that they should sell social change and value as much as any product. As D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay puts it, “Did you leave the world a better place with your product, project, or campaign?”

He says “Viva La Vulva” obviously does that because “it’s just funny, nice, and warm, and it sort of shines a light on a taboo subject in a very brilliant way.” In fact, all three of D&AD’s creativity-minded winners share a similar upbeat tone. “People are starting to lighten up about purpose a bit,” he says. “And what we’ve seen is some humor and a lighter touch emerging.”

The second standout is “Rang-tan,” an animated cartoon for Greenpeace developed by Mother London in the United Kingdom. It’s styled as a nursery rhyme as told by a little girl who has an orangutan move into her bedroom. She wants the animal to leave because it’s making a mess, throwing away her chocolate, and howling. But when she asks the orangutan directly about why it’s there, she finds out that the animal was kicked out of its home–the rainforest–in order to make way for palm oil harvesting operations. (Palm oil is used in many common household products; the ad claims 25 orangutans die each day from related deforestation.)

After the ad went viral online, a U.K. grocery chain called Iceland secured the rights to air it on television to help highlight their commitment to stocking goods without palm oil. “It got banned because it was the political,” Lindsay says. “And that, of course, generated huge publicity.”

The other highly lauded piece is “Price on Our Lives” for March for Our Lives by McCann New York. In late 2018, it won another D&AD award in a separate competition. As Fast Company reported, the idea revolved around creating a series of large orange price tags that represented the total dollars that the NRA donated to politicians in Florida divided by the number of students in the state. Turns out, the NRA paid about $1.05 per kid’s life to rebuff gun reform.

This effort also featured an online calculator that allowed people in other states to figure out the value that student lives were being sold for in order to keep guns less regulated in areas where they live. “There was a feeling that it had actually had some tangible effect in this argument around guns,” he says.

For Lindsay, these sorts of offerings highlight how traditional sales tactics can be harnessed in more positive ways. “I think that there’s strong and growing feeling in the advertising business and to a lesser extent design that we are at the very least complicit in encouraging overconsumption for obvious reasons,” he adds. “And because of that we need to be part of the solution. The skills we have are important in driving behavioral change.”

Apple —

It’s all about small bug fixes in the lead-up to big announcements at WWDC.

Enlarge/ From left to right: the iPhone 8, the iPhone XS, the iPhone XR, and the iPhone XS Max.

Samuel Axon

Just a little over a week after iOS 12.3 hit iPhones and iPads everywhere, Apple has released iOS 12.3.1—a minor update that fixes a couple bugs. Earlier this week, Apple also released a supplemental update for macOS 10.14.5 to fix issues with the T2 chip on some MacBook Pros, addressing a common user complaint.

The iOS update primarily focused on fixing some issues with the Messages app. More specifically, it addresses a bug that prevented the “report junk” option from appearing on applicable threads and another one that made unknown senders appear in your main inbox when they shouldn’t. Additionally, it addresses an issue that affected VoLTE calls.

Apple’s patch notes for iOS 12.3.1 are as follows:

iOS 12.3.1 includes bug fixes for your iPhone and iPad. This update:

Fixes an issue that could prevent making or receiving VoLTE calls

Fixes issues in Messages that could cause messages from unknown senders to appear in your conversation list even though Filter Unknown Senders is enabled

Fixes an issue that could prevent the Report Junk link from appearing in Messages threads from unknown senders

As usual, the small release also includes some supplemental security updates, which are detailed on Apple’s support website.

On the macOS side, Apple’s support documentation is unhelpfully vague. It suggests the update focused on fixing an issue related to the T2 chip in newer MacBook Pro computers. A minority of members of various communities of MacBook Pro users have blamed the T2 chip for a few issues, most notably sound problems with certain pro audio devices. Music producers are among Apple’s core audience for the laptops.

It’s unclear which T2-related problems Apple has fixed here, but the update is available now, and it also has an accompanying list of security changes.

Apple is expected to reveal details about much bigger changes coming in iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 at its WWDC “special event” in San Jose on June 3.

]]>https://www.appzplanet.org/apple-releases-ios-12-3-1-and-a-supplemental-update-for-macos-10-14-5-ars-technica/feed/0Apple’s MacBook Pro Keyboard Fix Comes Down to Tiny Tweaks – WIREDhttps://www.appzplanet.org/apples-macbook-pro-keyboard-fix-comes-down-to-tiny-tweaks-wired/
https://www.appzplanet.org/apples-macbook-pro-keyboard-fix-comes-down-to-tiny-tweaks-wired/#respondSat, 25 May 2019 00:19:19 +0000https://www.appzplanet.org/apples-macbook-pro-keyboard-fix-comes-down-to-tiny-tweaks-wired/Earlier this week, Apple announced an update to its top-of-the-line MacBook Pro laptops. Most notably, that update included a change…

Earlier this week, Apple announced an update to its top-of-the-line MacBook Pro laptops. Most notably, that update included a change to the keyboards that have been causing problems for some customers in recent years. Apple said on Tuesday that the change related to a material in the laptop’s third-generation keyboard, which uses a butterfly-switch mechanism. Now we have a little more insight into what those changes might be.

According to iFixit, the company that publishes online repair guides, sells parts, and shares information on consumer products after it has torn them apart, the new MacBook Pro keyboard does appear to have some different materials in it. But those changes still don’t shed a whole lot of light on exactly which problem Apple is trying to solve for, as the iFixit report points out.

Using specialized equipment (called Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, for those who really want to know), iFixt discovered at least two material differences in the 2019 MacBook Pro keyboard.

Kyle Wiens, the cofounder and CEO of iFixit, notes that the metal dome switch that goes on each key—which he compared to the lid on a jar of jam, because of the way it pops back up when you press on it—appears to now be of a different material. There’s a “difference in surface finish from the 2018 version to the 2019 version,” which indicates that Apple may be using a different metal, heat treatment, or both.

The transparent switch cover material also appears to be made of a different kind of plastic coating. “The cover in the 2018 model is semi-opaque, somewhat tacky, and feels like silicone. The new model is clearer and smooth to the touch,” the report notes. Readings from the FTIR analysis also seem to support that these are two different polymers, with the newer one strengthened with some sort of nylon material.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment when asked about the iFixit teardown report.

Apple has said before that the “vast majority” of its laptop customers haven’t had issues with the keyboard, but since the launch of the 2015 MacBook, customer complaints have ranged from stuck keys to repeating keys to the space bar or shift keys not working.

While these new keyboards may include different materials, they are not newly designed. The keyboards on the 2019 MacBook Pros have the same butterfly-switch mechanism that was first introduced in the 2015 MacBook, although the butterfly-switch design has received updates since then.

Wiens says he’s skeptical these material changes will fix all of the issues with the newer keyboards. “What’s clear is that they had multiple failure modes, and Apple has addressed it with multiple solutions,” he says. Wiens points out that in 2018, Apple introduced another kind of keyboard fix with a silicone membrane that went under each key. “Will these solutions fix the issue? Time will tell,” he says. “I’m skeptical, because the fundamental design is still the same.”

]]>https://www.appzplanet.org/apples-macbook-pro-keyboard-fix-comes-down-to-tiny-tweaks-wired/feed/0Some OnePlus 7 Pro phones are having strange phantom tap touchscreen problems – The Vergehttps://www.appzplanet.org/some-oneplus-7-pro-phones-are-having-strange-phantom-tap-touchscreen-problems-the-verge/
https://www.appzplanet.org/some-oneplus-7-pro-phones-are-having-strange-phantom-tap-touchscreen-problems-the-verge/#respondSat, 25 May 2019 00:19:18 +0000https://www.appzplanet.org/some-oneplus-7-pro-phones-are-having-strange-phantom-tap-touchscreen-problems-the-verge/By all accounts, the OnePlus 7 Pro is the nicest phone released by the company yet — with a higher…

By all accounts, the OnePlus 7 Pro is the nicest phone released by the company yet — with a higher price that reflects as much. But some early buyers are reporting that they’ve noticed phantom screen presses, where apps are responding as if something on the screen had been tapped even when the phone is sitting idle.

OnePlus is aware of the issue, according to Android Police, and says it’s treating it as a high priority after managing to successfully reproduce the problem. If you just bought this phone, you’re no doubt hoping that the phantom taps are something that can be eliminated through a software update and aren’t indicative of a deeper hardware dilemma. The OnePlus 7 Pro has a first-of-its-kind OLED screen with a refresh rate of up to 90Hz.

The Verge has been able to reproduce the ghost presses on one of our OnePlus 7 review units. Like some users on the OnePlus forums, it’s most easy to observe the issue with the app CPU-Z. But others have encountered it in Messages and other apps where phantom taps would prove very bothersome.

This doesn’t seem to be a universal problem that’s affecting all OnePlus 7 Pro phones, but we’ll be keeping an eye on the situation and provide any updates that OnePlus offers regarding a fix.

Ahead of their official 5-year wedding anniversary, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West got some time together to celebrate their romance by candlelight. According to source, the famous couple stepped out for a romantic dinner together on Thursday night at Santa Monica hot spot Giorgio Baldi—the perfect nod to their Italian nuptials years ago.

Ever the stylish pair, the makeup mogul stepped out in a little black dress and wrap-around heels while the rapper opted for a camel jacket and dark pants for the dinner.

“They were tucked away in the corner and ate by candlelight,” a source described to E! News. “They were mostly talking to one another quietly and smiling across the table. They were low-key and mellow. They showed each other pictures on their phones and shared stories.”

Their upcoming anniversary did not go unacknowledged by the restaurant. “They were both very happy and chatting with the staff. The staff congratulated them and sent over some special dishes for them to try,” the source said.

]]>https://www.appzplanet.org/inside-kim-kardashian-and-kanye-wests-low-key-anniversary-dinner-e-news/feed/0Zolgensma From Novartis Is The Most Expensive Drug Ever Approved : Shots – Health News – NPRhttps://www.appzplanet.org/zolgensma-from-novartis-is-the-most-expensive-drug-ever-approved-shots-health-news-npr/
https://www.appzplanet.org/zolgensma-from-novartis-is-the-most-expensive-drug-ever-approved-shots-health-news-npr/#respondSat, 25 May 2019 00:19:16 +0000https://www.appzplanet.org/zolgensma-from-novartis-is-the-most-expensive-drug-ever-approved-shots-health-news-npr/Zolgensma, a new drug approved by the FDA Friday, costs more than $2.1 million. It’s made by AveXis, a drugmaker…

Donovan had spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare disorder caused by a defective gene; the illness destroys the nerves that control muscles. Babies with the most severe form of the disorder typically don’t live past their second birthday.

“We were devastated,” Weisgarber says, recalling the diagnosis. “It was definitely the worst time of our lives.”

Zolgensma, a new drug approved by the FDA Friday, costs more than $2 million.

Novartis

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Novartis

Zolgensma, a new drug approved by the FDA Friday, costs more than $2 million.

Novartis

But then doctors told Laura and her husband, Matthew, about an experimental gene therapy that was being tested for SMA. So they agreed to let them infuse Donovan with genetically modified viruses carrying healthy copies of the gene he needed.

Donovan slowly started to improve. Donovan still needs a wheelchair to get around and a feeding tube for nutrition. But otherwise he’s doing well, his mother says.

“He loves going outside. He loves playing with his family. He goes to preschool,” Weisgarber says. “He gets to do a lot of normal things. It’s amazing.”

And Donovan isn’t alone. The gene therapy — called Zolgensma —has been saving other babies with spinal muscular atrophy.

“We saw just remarkable results for these kids,” says David Lennon, president of AveXis,Inc., of Bannockburn, Ill., the company that developed Zolgensma. The company is owned by drug giant Novartis. (AveXis connected NPR with the Weisgarber family.)

Based on the AveXis studies, the FDA approved Zolgensma Friday, making it only the second gene therapy ever approved for a genetic disorder. There are currently around 700 patients eligible for the treatment, according to Novartis, and roughly 30 babies are born each month with the disease.

Novartis set the price at $2.125 million but offers insurers the ability to pay $425,000 a year for five years.This price tag makes Zolgensma the most expensive drug ever approved.

“We have been slowly subjected to price increases the same way the frog in the boiling water is slowly boiled to death,” Bach says.

Insurers are expected to cover the cost. The company says payment plans will be available.

AveXis president Lennon acknowledges the numbers might seem shocking. But he argues the drug is easily worth it. The only existing treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, a drug called Spinraza, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Zolgensma hopefully will be aone-time, life-saving treatment.

“We’re talking about a lifetime of benefit being condensed down into a one-time treatment,” Lennon says. “We’re not used to thinking about this that way. We’re used to a system of a chronic medication where we spread things out over years if not decades.”

The drug is delivered as a single one-time dose to address the genetic root cause of the disorder, the company says, producing long-term effects.

From that point of view, Lennon calls it “highly cost-effective” and a “fair and reasonable price.”

Drug companies need to be able to recoup the costs of developing life-saving, cutting-edge treatments, he says, if they’re going to be encouraged to find new breakthroughs.

“We’re continuing to reinvest in new therapies beyond Zolgensma into the next wave of gene therapies that are going to hopefully offer cures for other diseases,” Lennon says.

At one point, Novartis said publicly that the price of Zolgensma might be as high as $5 million.

“Insurers were going to cover Zolgensma no matter the price,” says Dr. Steven D. Pearson, president of the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review in Boston, an independent research group that studies drug pricing. “It is a positive outcome for patients and the entire health system that Novartis instead chose to price Zolgensma at a level that more fairly aligns with the benefits for these children and their families.”

ICER estimated that a reasonable price would be between $1.2 and $2.1 million per treatment, based on an estimate of years of quality life valued at $100,000 to $15o,000 per year.

Donovan’s parents didn’t have to pay for the treatment because their son was part of a research study. But they think Zolgensma is worth the price.

“I understand that it can be shocking when you see a price tag on a treatment like this,” Weisbarger says. “But giving someone a life — someone that would have died in infancy or early childhood the opportunity to live into adulthood — I think that’s a valuable investment.”

The company says it has been manufacturing the drug since January and supplies of the drug will be released “shortly,” Lennon says.

]]>https://www.appzplanet.org/zolgensma-from-novartis-is-the-most-expensive-drug-ever-approved-shots-health-news-npr/feed/0Naomi Scott Belts Out a New Song for ‘Aladdin’ in “Speechless” Music Videohttps://www.appzplanet.org/naomi-scott-belts-out-a-new-song-for-aladdin-in-speechless-music-video/
https://www.appzplanet.org/naomi-scott-belts-out-a-new-song-for-aladdin-in-speechless-music-video/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 00:21:23 +0000https://www.appzplanet.org/naomi-scott-belts-out-a-new-song-for-aladdin-in-speechless-music-video/The original Aladdin was made all the way back in 1992. So it only makes sense that the music video for a new original song in the live-action remake of Disney’s animated classic is a throwback to that decade too. Disney has just released the full version of “Speechless,” a new song that Naomi Scott…

The original Aladdin was made all the way back in 1992. So it only makes sense that the music video for a new original song in the live-action remake of Disney’s animated classic is a throwback to that decade too.

Disney has just released the full version of “Speechless,” a new song that Naomi Scott sings in the movie as Princess Jasmine. It’s a powerful ballad that gives Jasmine a new dimension as she sings that she won’t be silenced or shut down. The oppression of women is something that wasn’t overtly touched upon in the original movie, so we’re interested to see how they handle that with this movie. Listen to the new Aladdin song in the music video below.

“Speechless” was written by Tony and Oscar winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land) in collaboration with original Aladdin composer Alan Menken. Disney is undoubtedly hoping this will land them an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, and after you listen to it, I think we can all agree that’s very likely to happen. Plus, it’s nice that they let Jasmine have this moment, despite the fact that Mena Massoud is the one playing Aladdin.

Naomi Scott’s take on Jasmine is featured prominently in the trailer, thought not quite as prominently as the 1990s vibes of this music video. How long has it been since we’ve gotten a music video that stages the recording of the song with an orchestra in the room as clips from the movie appear on playback behind them? There are even scenes of Naomi Scott laughing it up with the sound engineers in the recording booth. It just makes me think of this hilarious moment in They Came Together:

Aladdin also stars Marwan Kenzari stars as the villainous Jafar, Navid Negahban as the Sultan of Agrabah, Nasim Pedrad as Dalia, Jasmine’s free-spirited best friend and confidante, and Billy Magnussen as the handsome and arrogant rival suitor Prince Anders.

You can buy tickets for Aladdin right now at Fandango and wherever tickets are sold. The movie opens May 24, 2019.

A thrilling and vibrant live-action adaptation of Disney’s 1992 classic, “Aladdin” is the exciting tale of the charming street rat Aladdin, the courageous and self-determined Princess Jasmine and the Genie who may be the key to their future. Directed by Guy Ritchie, who brings his singular flair for fast-paced, gritty, visceral action to the fictitious port city of Agrabah, “Aladdin” is written by John August and Ritchie based on Disney’s “Aladdin.”

A big asteroid and its tiny companion moon will zoom harmlessly past Earth this weekend.

The so-called binary asteroid, dubbed 1999 KW4, will make its closest approach at 7:05 p.m. ET, when the paired objects will be about 3 million miles from Earth and moving at a speed of about 50,000 miles per hour.

“It’s one of the closest binary flybys probably in recent history,” Vishnu Reddy, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said. “That’s what makes it a very interesting target.”

Even at its closest approach, the asteroid will be too faint to be seen with the naked eye, according to Reddy.

Asteroid 1999 KW4 was discovered May 20, 1999, at the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) facility near Socorro, New Mexico, and has been studied extensively since then.

Observations show that the primary, or Alpha, object is about 0.8 mile wide, shaped like a spinning top with a prominent ridge around its equator. The smaller, or Beta, object is roughly one-third the size of the Alpha object and orbits the latter at a distance of about 1.6 miles.

]]>https://www.appzplanet.org/mile-wide-asteroid-and-its-tiny-moon-to-zoom-past-earth-this-weekend-nbc-news/feed/0This is how many cancer cases are linked to unhealthy diet – New York Posthttps://www.appzplanet.org/this-is-how-many-cancer-cases-are-linked-to-unhealthy-diet-new-york-post/
https://www.appzplanet.org/this-is-how-many-cancer-cases-are-linked-to-unhealthy-diet-new-york-post/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 00:20:04 +0000https://www.appzplanet.org/this-is-how-many-cancer-cases-are-linked-to-unhealthy-diet-new-york-post/May 23, 2019 | 4:03pm An apple a day might keep cancer away. More than 80,000 cancer cases in the…

The study, conducted by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, analyzed cancer diagnoses among US adults from 2015 along with data from two national surveys on Americans’ diets to determine how many cases were linked to diets low in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and high in processed sugar, sugary beverages and red meats.

The findings are comparable to the number of cancer cases linked to alcohol consumption, which amount to between 4 and 6 percent. Excessive body weight is linked to 7 percent to 8 percent of cases and lack of physical activity is tied to 2 percent to 3 percent.

“Our findings underscore the opportunity to reduce cancer burden and disparities in the United States by improving food intake,” said study author Fang Zhang and cancer and nutrition researcher at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts.

Of all types of cancers, colorectal cancer had the highest link to poor diet. Roughly 38 percent, or 52,000 cases, of colorectal cancer diagnosed in 2015 were diet-related. That compared to around 14,400 cancer cases of the mouth, pharynx, and larynx, 3,165 cases of uterine cancer, and 3,060 cases of post-menopausal breast cancer.

“Our results call for nutrition policies to address the U.S. cancer burden,” said the study authors, who proposed putting government-sponsored warning labels on red meats and other cancer-linked foods.

]]>https://www.appzplanet.org/this-is-how-many-cancer-cases-are-linked-to-unhealthy-diet-new-york-post/feed/0Google now lets you order food without a delivery app – The Vergehttps://www.appzplanet.org/google-now-lets-you-order-food-without-a-delivery-app-the-verge/
https://www.appzplanet.org/google-now-lets-you-order-food-without-a-delivery-app-the-verge/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 00:20:03 +0000https://www.appzplanet.org/google-now-lets-you-order-food-without-a-delivery-app-the-verge/Starting today, you can now order food directly from Google Search, Google Maps, or Google Assistant. The functionality works using…

Starting today, you can now order food directly from Google Search, Google Maps, or Google Assistant. The functionality works using partnerships with existing delivery companies like DoorDash, Postmates, and ChowNow, and means you can order from any of them without having to downloading an additional app, or even visiting their website.

In Google Search and Google Maps, the functionality works via a new “Order Online” button that will appear when you search for a supported restaurant. From here, you can pick between pickup and delivery, and select which service you want to order your food through. If the restaurant supports it, your ordering selections are all made entirely through Google’s interface and Google Pay.

Google Assistant can also take your order, and even supports reordering past selections.Image: Google

The Google Assistant implementation on iOS and Android phones works in a similar way. You start the process by asking Google to order food from a specific restaurant, before selecting a delivery service and making your food selections through Google’s interface. Alternatively you can ask Google’s voice assistant to repeat a previous order if you don’t want to deal with the indecision of choosing what to order. There’s no mention of whether this feature is available through Google Assistant smart speakers or, more usefully, Google smart displays.

The new functionality supports five different delivery services at launch — DoorDash, Postmates, Delivery.com, Slice, and ChowNow — and Google says it will add support for Zuppler and others in the future. Major delivery services like Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Grubhub, and Just Eat are currently missing from Google’s roster.

This is just the latest in a string of restaurant-related features that Google has recently added to its apps and services. The most well known of these is Google Duplex, a (mostly) automated voice assistant that’s able to call up restaurants on your behalf and make reservations. It’s ambitious, but so far it’s been met with limited success. At this year’s Google I/O, the company also demoed a new piece of Google Lens functionality that allows you to point your camera at a restaurant’s menu and see reviews from Google Maps.